Transcriber's Note:
A Table of Contents has been added.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
(Leisure-Hour Series)
THE WOOING O'T
WHICH SHALL IT BE?
RALPH WILTON'S WEIRD.
LEISURE HOUR SERIES
RALPH WILTON'S WEIRD
A NOVEL
BY MRS. ALEXANDER
Author of "The Wooing O't" and "Which Shall it Be?"
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1875
John F. Trow & Son, Printers,
205-213 East 12th St., New York.
CONTENTS
| CHAPTER I. | 1 |
| CHAPTER II. | 21 |
| CHAPTER III. | 41 |
| CHAPTER IV. | 71 |
| CHAPTER V. | 98 |
| CHAPTER VI. | 127 |
| CHAPTER VII. | 156 |
| CHAPTER VIII. | 184 |
| CHAPTER IX. | 202 |
| CHAPTER X. | 226 |
| CHAPTER XI. | 235 |
| CHAPTER XII. | 249 |
RALPH WILTON'S WEIRD.
CHAPTER I.
The yellow sunlight of a crisp October day was lighting up the fadedthough rich hangings, and the abundant but somewhat blackened gilding,of a large study or morning-room in one of the stately mansions ofMayfair, nearly fourteen years ago.
Bookcases and escritoires, writing-tables and reading-tables more orless convenient, easy-chairs, print-stands furnished with well-filledportfolios, pictures, bronzes, all the signs and tokens of wealth, werethere, but nothing new. An impress of extinct vitality was stamped uponthe chamber and all it contained. The very fire burned with a dull,continuous glow, neither flaming nor crackling.
On one side of this fire, his back to the light, in a high leathernchair, sat an old man. Originally slight in frame, he now lookedattenuated. His blue, brass-buttoned coat, though evidently from thehands of an artist, hung loosely upon him. His thin gray hair[Pg 2] wascarelessly brushed back from a brow not high but peculiarly wide, astraight, refined nose, a square-cut chin, a thin-lipped, slightly cruelmouth, a tint of the deadliest pallor—all these combined to make hiscountenance at once attractive and repellent. There was a